Two days left to kickstart the full-length comic zine of Fairy Tales 2nd-prize winner "Beautifully Banal"

After winning second place in Blank Space's 2015 Fairy Tales Architecture Competition, University of Illinois at Chicago graduate students Alexander Culler and Danny Travis took things one step further to publish their submission, "Beautifully Banal", into a full-length architectural comic zine. The duo initiated a Kickstarter campaign earlier this month that received speedy support, reaching their $1,000 goal in just two days. Now with 52 hours to go, the campaign has garnered $3,578.

Culler and Travis set up the campaign in an effort to bring a light-hearted story that readers both within and outside of the architectural community can appreciate. Derived from the universal notion of finding one's place in the world, the three-part narrative follows Phineas the fly's journey through three major architectural programs: Residential, Commercial, and Industrial.

Readers encounter various architectural drawing conventions at different scales like plans, sections, axonometrics, elevations, and more interesting perspectives like surface drawings, infographics, and multi-view projections.

Elevation

Plan

Ceiling Plan

'The end product aims to produce an alternate reading of the 'everyday'...Knowing more about a place, and all of the nuance that comes with that place, is useful in telling a story that might otherwise be focused on character development only.' Culler and Travis write on Kickstarter.

They plan to use the funds to publish the story as a standard edition 8.5" x 11" book and also as a limited-edition oversized newsprint that promises to 'capture all of the details'. Fun extras include collectible posters and 3D-printed objects, in addition to a bonus mini-comic, an extra chapter to the story, and a bonus drawing as a shoutout to all their backers.